Return to the Pinery

A flourishing business, beautiful home, great friends, successful children, two wonderful grandchildren, wealth beyond just being 'well-off', Jessie Tucker had everything - or so it seemed. Something was missing in Jessie's life. A feeling she could not resolve. Maybe that was why she longed to return to the place of her youth, where the mountains of the Guadalupe rose up out of the barren plains of western Texas. It was there in the foothills of those mountains her widowed father operated a stagecoach station along the Butterfield mail route to California in 1858. And now, forty-five years later, after living in the city of St. Louis most of her adult life, she yearned to see again the place in the shadow of the Guadalupe Mountains called the 'Pinery'. In 1904 Jessie booked the 1,000 mile journey with the B & B Stagecoach Excursion Company and persuaded her oldest son and family to accompany her by assuring them it would be an adventure of a lifetime. Though the Tucker's trip had been well planned by the stagecoach excursion company, what they found at their destination was completely unexpected. The Tucker family's accommodations had been booked at a ranch owned by a person Jessie had not seen in over forty years. During their two week stay on the ranch in the foothills of the Guadalupe near the 'Pinery', Jessie discovers new meaning to her life - one of peace, contentment and 'forgiveness'.